Climategate Concessions

The Drudge Report linked to a number of articles updating the public on Climategate including a number of concessions from Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. In an interview with BBC Jones admitted that there was no statistically significant rise in temperature in the past fifteen years, that the Medieval Warming Period was as warm or warmer than today and that he had trouble keeping track of the information. In fact, “Colleagues have expressed concern that the reason he has refused Freedom of Information requests for the data is that he has lost some of the crucial papers.”

While these are all undoubtedly important revelations, this one is an answer that should grab Congress’s attention. BBC asked, “When scientists say “the debate on climate change is over”, what exactly do they mean – and what don’t they mean?” Jones answered,

It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.”

If the vast majority of climatologists do not believe the debate on climate change is over, why do our politicians pushing for cap and trade and a transition to a “clean energy economy” repeatedly assert that the science is settled? Because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said so and told us that a warming planet was “unequivocal.”

One of the additional benefits of Climategate is that it’s bringing dissenting science from the backburner to the front. The UK’s Timeshighlights the work of climatologist John Christy, a former lead author on the IPCC, who studied the upward biases in weather stations. Christy said, “The popular data sets show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land development.”

Anthony Watts, creator of the website SufaceStations.org and blogger at wattsupwiththat.com does similar work in the United States. SufaceStations.org is a project that monitors the quality of data at America’s 1,221 weather stations. Once a believer that manmade carbon dioxide had a significant effect on the earth’s atmosphere, Watts’ change of heart is largely based on the lack of credible science.

Watts is widely known in the climate change science community for visiting weather stations across the country. He found that several biases in the location of many of the temperature reading devices. Many are on unnatural surface temperatures: on cinder, asphalt, wood chips, and concrete. They lay on top or roofs or on airport runways. Other spots for stations included spots next to an incinerator, waste management facilities (where it’s much warmer) and outside of an air conditioning unit right next to where the warm air is released. One station in Baltimore had readings of over 100 degrees F when no other nearby station did. That station has been shut down but the climate records remain. His conclusion is that most of the weather stations have an upwards bias of 1 degree Celsius and in many cases, it’s 2 degrees C.

Kevin Trenberth, the author reserved for the observed temperature changes chapter in the IPCC report acknowledged these biases but also noted other physical changes such as rising sea levels and ice cap losses as other evidence for global warming.

The UK will go forth conducting an independent review of the Climategate scandal. One member of the independent panel already resigned after skeptics questioned his impartiality. Given the importance of this review, his resignation is admirable; let’s hope the six-member panel of investigators remains impartial.

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Al Gore's Global Warming has been proven to be a hoax and a scam. Science is not now or ever was based on "consensus". Science is based on fact, which is lacking in the Global Warming theory as proposed by Gore and his followers.

Unless these man-made global warming theorists admit the world was created by man, they have no evidence. They're so obsessed with their own corruption they can't accept FACTS! All people of the world should shove these idiots out the door! Including the idiots in public office that support it.

Washington D.C> weather station is at Reagan Nat'l. Airport and recorded over a foot less snow than actually fell. I still have over 18 in. on my roof and at one time had over 4 Ft. in my yard. The weather bu. says the river and surrounding buildings make the reading less, yet they still tout this as the amount. Dec. we got 22", 1st blizzard almost three feet, the an addional 6 inches then another 2-1/2 feet, there are mounds of snow along our roads over six feet high, parking lots are a mess ND WE HAVE OVER A MONTH LEFT OF WINTER AND HAVE SEEN blizzards here in Mar. and Appril, also in the '50's snow May 1, Global Warming, Al Gore return your Nobel award and money, you are a farce and have disgraced the office you once held.

I want to know why we can not sue Al Gore and and the IPCC for fraud, relieve them of ill-gotten loot and send them to jail. Imagine a drug company that fabricated and defrauded using false data. The law suits will be piled high faster than pancakes at a I-Hop. I am sick and tired of these criminals getting away with the climate scam.

The myth is being perpetuated by industry. I visited our local Lincoln-Mercury dealership last night and found their hybrid car to have a sticker noting its impact on "Global Warming." I asked the salesman what the "Global Warming" impact of the MKT (not a hybrid) might be and he gave me a blank stare. I suggested it is about the same as anything else – pretty close to zero. After talking to lots of automotive engineers I am not convinced the net effect of hybrids is any better than convnetional powertrains. But its all about marketing.

One of the biggest losses in this Climate Scam is that we not only distrust politicians and the media more than ever … but now we have to add SCIENTISTS to the list of those who we no longer can trust for the truth.

The proper conduct of a rational being starts with respect for the minds of others.

In science, this means the exposure of one?s ideas to the scrutiny of other minds, often with conflicting views, in the peer-review process. In the study of human affairs such respect unfolds into curiosity about the working of different cultures and the role of mystical experiences in them, aroused by religious practices. Ultimately, law and institu-tions for its enforcement reflect religious concepts of what is right and what is wrong.

This was the approach taken by Richard Francis Burton, one of the greatest among the gifted Victorian scholars. His forty narratives of travels to exotic or uncharted spaces are well known, but his quest for ultimate knowledge through religious experience is revealed in Burton?s biography, written by Edward Rice.

As a secret agent of the Indian Army, in mid 19th century, Burton dressed the garb that suited the mission, developed fluency in languages and observed customs on the troublesome Northwest border, along Afghanistan. Burton was so thorough in his inquiries among Sikhs that he completed studies of holy books and went through the rituals to be accepted as a Sikh sage and preacher. He dedicated greater and longer attention to Islam and capped it with his pilgrimage to Mecca, the site forbidden to infidels.

At a time when Europeans despised what they saw as backward cultures, Burton and a group of like scholars approached them with open minds. From their findings emerged the college of oriental studies in Oxford, instrumental in shaping the na-tion-building effort that unified India into the biggest democracy in the world. European secularists would do well to apply their claimed scientific de-tachment to the study of the Christian religion as earnestly as Burton did.

In the opposite direction the Mother of Par-liaments, now in her second childhood, is making real Orwell?s nightmare of 1984. This is recent. In the 18th century all Europe was known as Christen-dom. On the Continent the French revolution broke the political power of the clergy and, in the 19th century, secularists continued the hostility in anti-clerical campaigns that swept Europe. English-speaking countries were untouched by these up-heavals and have remained, to this day, the Chris-tian societies they were in the 18th century.

Anti-clericals say that religious people are unenlightened enemies of science. Reason would rule the world if religion did not exist; there would be no more hatred to abet war and tyranny. Those of this persuasion preach scientism not science ? the belief that science can explain all meaning of existence. They scorn religious believers and yet their own belief leads them to support things with no rhyme or reason and plenty of poison when scientism overreaches itself and morphs into Euro-pean ideologies.

In an alternative view Michael Crichton, with the authority of a Harvard trained medical doc-tor and former professor of anthropology at Cam-bridge, suggests that religion may be hardwired into the human brain. Suppressed in one form, it returns in another.

In a vast body of philosophical thought the Biblical kind of religion underpins reason. Histori-cally, Western science preceded the 18th century Enlightenment. The work of Newton can be traced to the biblical belief that the universe is the product of a rational Creator, who endowed man with rea-son so that he could ask questions about the natu-ral world. Noted religious-minded thinkers an-swered plenty of questions, from Newton and Des-cartes to Pasteur, to Mendel, Curie, and Zichichi. Their religious belief obviously had no adverse effect on the quality of their scientific work.

Biblical ethics form the backbone of Anglo-Saxon political institutions that evolved over one thousand years; they are not a code of conduct devised by enlightened 18th century gentlemen, as some secularists hold. One gentleman of the time was Jean Jacques Rousseau who devised a plan for a society ruled by reason in obedience to a nebulous ?general will?, that would come when altar and throne were overturned. What came from fol-lowing the plan? A Europe devastated by 25 years of war contrived by the ambition of tyrants. Their thought fermented during the 19th century and dis-tilled into the totalitarian creeds of the 20th century, a witches? brew so intoxicating that it exalts vio-lence as the highest form of human activity.

Even after the discredit of Nazism and Communism, the two spurious sons of the Enlight-enment, the effect lingers on. With the ascent of its secularism in the West, the drive to believe did not fade away. Contemporary secularists stopped prac-ticing religious faiths – but their urge was channeled into secular religions, as predicted by Crichton. Those prevalent today in leftist circles ? scientism, relativism, environmentalism, egalitarianism, multi-culturalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism ? have a track record as enemies of liberty, science and reason. What is new is the spread of these ersatz creeds to English speaking countries.

Take environmentalism, a badge that iden-tifies the modern ?progressive?. It is irrational by Western standards. Ecology was a term coined by Ernst Haeckel, a biologist/philosopher anti-Christian politician who roamed forests to enter into commun-ion with Nature. His ruminations, based on a mysti-cal belief in the organic harmony of the universe, grew out of pagan ideas that reject reason. They demoted man from the biblically assigned post of master of creation to that of serf of demagogues beyond the pale of a rational brain. Haeckel?s ideas were expanded in the doctrine of Lebensraum, the pan-German geopolitics, the March to the East, eugenics; all converged to Nazism.

This came about because ideology, when it twists evidence to fit prejudice, stands against rea-son and so sacrifices the scientific search for truth to a grab for power. Environmentalism?s current cause, man-made global warming theory, is such a grab by unsavory interests. Politicians look forward to trillions of dollars of revenues by taxing energy; government bureaucrats crave the power that goes with the licensing of energy production and the rationing of its use; the traffic in carbon credits has fallen into the grip of racketeers.

Incredible is the spectacle of public policies designed to scrap industrial economies, based on a global warming hypothesis that may never be proven. It has alternative hypotheses against it and shows signs that much of the supporting ?science? is at best sloppy and at worst fraudulent.

Like other ideologies, global warming alarmism claims immunity to questioning, however sound the objection against it. In 1992 Al Gore pro-claimed that the debate about global warming was over and the science settled, with all the certitude of a lawyer who says: ?Case closed?. This claim of consensus irks those with training in science. They know that original scientific thought arises in inde-pendent minds questioning conventional wisdom and that no case is ever closed; true science rec-ognizes no authority above proof backed by ex-perimental evidence. In contrast, ideologues hold nothing to be scrutinized in a rational way; only ideology thrust on the faithful ? and imposed with witch hunts against doubters.

Over fifteen years, 50 billion dollars of pub-lic funds were misspent to fabricate a ?scientific consensus? that man-made global warming threat-ens the planet, based on questionable computer models that deliver what the political agenda of the sponsor demands.

On the other side stand scientists who study and propose alternatives to the richly en-dowed man-made global warming hypothesis. Branded as Deniers, Flat-earthers, they find little funding for research, suffer character assassination or professional exclusion. That was the fate of many earnest scientists on the wrong side of the tracks, but among them are scientists with stature too great be dismissed with name-calling:

? Richard Lindzen. Professor of meteorology at MIT. His studies are directed to the effect of water vapor and cloud cover on climate change, factors that he sees as much greater than man-made carbon dioxide.

? Henrik Svensmark. Recently explained the role of cosmic rays in the ionization of wa-ter vapor in the lower troposphere and the formation of clouds. UN models assume a constant cloud cover over the planet but a 4% shift in it has a bearing on climate equivalent to that of all of man-made car-bon dioxide over two centuries. The impor-tance of this study of the physics and chemistry of clouds may well be realized.

? S. Baliunas and W. Soon are two Harvard scientists who linked the long cycles of ice ages to matching astronomical cycles.

In addition, renowned physicists with achievements based on mathematical models, question the valid-ity of models of climate with tenuous links to ex-perimental evidence.

? Antonino Zichichi. The foremost physicist of Italy, discoverer of anti-matter, as scientific advisor of the Vatican, warned the clergy to stay away from the politics of global warm-ing that rests on invalid computer models.

? Freeman Dyson. The architect of the merger of three versions of quantum elec-trodynamics, and arguably the greatest British physicist alive, studied climate com-puter models and found them wanting.

? Claude Allegre, of the Institute of Geophys-ics of Paris, devised a dating system for rocks, based on isotopes, which revolution-ized the study of the chronology of geologi-cal changes. He recently published a book: L?Imposture Climatique, ou la Fausse ?cologie, a title that shows a piece of his mind. An early supporter of the global warming cause, he turned away in disgust at the antics of environmental activists.

The vitriolic attacks of environmental propa-ganda backfire when they vilify scientists of this caliber as shills of the big bad oil companies.

The claim of Al Gore that 2500 United Na-tions climate scientists hold the last word, as trained professionals, has deceived a credulous public into believing that there is a climate science with predictive capacity, known to the select few. Until recent times no university offered a B.Sc. de-gree in climate science. Climate studies draw on one hundred different fields, such as: meteorology; oceanography; mathematics, physics; chemistry; geology; fluid mechanics; paleontology; botany; zoology; etc. There is no scientific consensus and no 2500 climate scientists around.

Another false claim is that the climate stud-ies summarized in the four Assessment Reports of the UN since 1990 are based on peer-reviewed science. What the Climategate scandals revealed is the failure of peer review, when a narrow circle of researchers under the same roof reviewed their own work, carried away by the notion that they were saving the planet.

What transpires is that peer-review of such studies remains to be done. If a paper on climate is found wanting, it should be withdrawn and all sub-sequent papers, based on it, should also be with-drawn, even if this means scrapping all Assessment Reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as a prelude to a fresh and unbi-ased start. As they stand, such UN Reports offer no justification for radical public policies to de-carbonize the world economy to roll it back to an 18th century agrarian economy.

Welcome to 1984, when the former Work-shop of the World would be denuded of industry in order to save the planet. Air travel should cease because it is against Nature. ?If God wanted man to fly, man would have wings? is not a Christian belief; it is a tenet of environmental true believers.

There are calls by the relativistic ideologues to do away with science, since they say it is uncer-tain and blocks prompt action. In its place they de-mand ?societal values?. The legal requirement that public regulatory powers be based on sound sci-ence now takes second place to the ?precautionary principle?. In a nutshell, it establishes that where science is not settled, bureaucratic whim trumps science. An egregious case was the ban on use of aluminum sulfate in water supply treatment of a large Australian city, because some medical re-search had pointed to a possible link of aluminum to Alzheimer?s disease, Further medical research has since refuted such a link, but the ban remains because it is politically correct.

Such perversion by ?post-normal science? finds a parallel in the secularist corrosion of political institutions of English speaking countries, previ-ously thought to be immune to it. The onslaught against civil liberties in Britain during the New La-bour years now spreads to the United States.

New Labour introduced Anti-Social Behav-iour Orders (ASBOs), decrees that tell individuals to behave how the authorities want ? or else… A local authority can issue an ASBO forbidding an individ-ual from walking down a certain street, from swear-ing in public or from wearing specific clothes, with no legal proof that the citizen is guilty of anything. ASBOs are rulings at the whim of local officials and on the basis of hearsay, not evidence. Those who disobey an ASBO may be jailed for five years with-out trial. It is now popular, but will come full circle against those who find it fun to pester neighbors over trivialities. Civil liberties that hark back to Magna Charta will once again be cherished.

New Labour proposes ID cards, unheard of in English speaking countries; a list of suspect citi-zens in the hands of the powers-that-be. Only Czar-ist Russia had them, a century ago, when the world had abolished passports as a relic of 18th century oppressive regimes. Russians were then the butt of jokes: ?A Russian has three parts: body, soul, and ID papers?. Mussolini liked the idea perfected by Lenin, and brought it to Italy, where citizens did not deserve the confidence of Fascist authorities. The ultimate use of ID is seen in North Korea: the owner of a bicycle must first call at a police station to re-cord the route he intends to follow.

In 1997 there were few CCTV surveillance cameras in the UK. Today Britain has one fifth of the world?s CCTV cameras, more than five million, one camera for every three households. Some cameras are equipped with automatic number-plate recognition, face recognition and behavior recogni-tion, with software to analyze movements in images in search of suspicious behavior. Operators in bun-kers use loudspeakers to shout orders at those who litter, loiter, or display movements deemed suspect to them.

Parliament had long refused to allow the creation of a police force in Britain, uncongenial with tradition and in view of the evil reputation of Continental police. But London was riddled with pickpockets. Robert Peel, as Home Secretary in 1829, got authority to form the Metropolitan Police, with the pledge that his ?Bobbies? would remain unarmed. Firearms were kept under lock, and could only be carried by policemen after written authoriza-tion that laid down in precise terms the circum-stances under which they could be fired. In the 21st century, New Labour gave policemen arms and discretion in their use. There are now thousands of them on the streets, and an early victim was an innocent electrician, murdered by policemen while on his way to work.

A quest in British schools aims at finding ?socially conscious? children to be pressed into service of the government to ?remind adults to act responsibly on our streets,? as an official press release puts it. Turning children into informers is the practice of totalitarian regimes.

Pubs were traditionally free from restraints, as places where you could smoke, get drunk, shout, and swear to your heart?s content. Smoking is now banned in all pubs, clubs and workplaces across the UK. Toilets are now pasted with public health posters warning of the dangers of tobacco, alcohol, sexually transmitted diseases and drugs.

New Labour has turned the pub and other things into outlets for its propaganda. In 2005, the ?Football and Health? drive was launched to har-ness the mass appeal of football to promote healthy living. ?Football is an important part of many peo-ple?s lives; it provides great opportunities to get across key messages about healthy, active lives,? brazenly justified one New Labour minister. Football fans, that pay to enter a stadium to see a match, are now served leaflets, they never asked for, about sexual health, the dangers of smoking, how much fruit they should eat.

Couples who want to adopt a child to be brought up by a mother and father are rejected by adoption panels and vilified as ?homophobic? when they declare themselves Christians. Secularists fear a biblical morality that regards an anti-human life-style as sinful.

Since Biblical religion underpins reason and morality, the erosion of science and civil liberties in the West has followed the erosion of traditional religion. In its place emerges lawless rule by busy-body, as it has been for most of history and still is, in much of a world that gropes to climb out of it.

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